Barrier

by Mary Victoria Johnson

  The fire, I barely managed to tell Harriet, during which Fred was lost, had nearly been the end for me. I explained how Lucas and Penny had found letters, and how they worked together to figure out puzzle after puzzle concerning them, relationship strained by the fact they were opponents in a very real game that would determine the rest of their lives.

  Then how the end came, when Avery came back to us, and Fred had told me to get myself out. So I had. I’d pulled that lever, leaving everything and everyone behind as the world crumbled to ashes.

  I told Harriet everything, everything except about D. Some part of my mind warned me that involving her in that charade would not be wise.

  “…And so that’s it,” I wrapped up, throat sore from all the talking, and mentally shaken from recalling so much at once. “I don’t know if my friends are all right, or what happened to Boundary after I left. I still don’t know what Boundary even was, or how it could exist, and most importantly of all, I don’t know if it is possible to somehow get my friends back out again. People here told me that it was impossible, and I’d been hallucinating.”

  Harriet swore in awe, struggling to find a word strong enough. “That…that’s…I would never have been able to guess that had happened to you, not in a million years. And before you ask, yes, I believe you. How can I not?”

  “Besides…” I smiled thinly, “…I’m not clever enough to invent a tale like that.”

  The release at telling my story felt wonderful and exposing at the same time. It hadn’t been easy, relaying those details, and I had skipped rather quickly over certain segments like the fire.

  “I won’t tell,” Harriet vowed. “Gosh, it makes my own problems seem very silly.”

  I shivered. It had taken a while for me to finish, and now was very chilly indeed. There were shouts from the house, and I knew we didn’t have much time before we were found.

  “I don’t really know how to explain it,” she started slowly, brow furrowed as she searched for the right words. “What most people can’t seem to believe is that I can’t actually see anything. Whenever the Others are in a room, I just get this feeling, so strong I can pinpoint exactly where that are. Sometimes I can even feel emotion coming from them, like anger when you showed up, and sometimes resentment towards Anna. Back there, when they broke the light, it felt as though there were many of them in the room, and all of them had this menace. They’ve never done anything quite so obvious before, though. They make the curtains twitch without any wind, and they made me drop that casserole dish. It’s as though they’re getting stronger. It scares me, but like you said, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Only Andrew believes me.” She sniffed, shivering too now. “The rest just tell me to shut up when I talk about it.”

  “Andrew?” I frowned. “But he acts as though he thinks—”

  “Only in front of other people.” She yawned, wrapping her arms tightly around her middle and getting once more to her feet. “But when we’re alone, he likes to ask questions. Sometimes he gets really frustrated when I can’t answer them, so I try to steer away from him.”

  The light and noise were getting closer, so I unsteadily got to my feet and tried to ignore the disgusting sogginess on my trousers from where I had sat.

  “We should go now,” I told her gently.

  “They’ll be angry at me.” Harriet sighed. “But there’s nothing I can do if they won’t believe me.”

  I nodded, and we drifted out of the trees. Harriet wasn’t lying, that much I was certain of. The Others were real.

  This reality was turning out to be just as strange as the one I’d left behind.

  Chapter Nine

  To James’s—and Kitty’s—disappointment, November fifth passed without so much as a candle being lit. Julia determined that supplies and time were too scarce to waste on such trivial things as festivities, and given that it was becoming more and more apparent that the war wouldn’t be over by Christmas yet again, she felt celebrating anything was out of order.

  But Kitty Rogers wasn’t the type to let reality get in the way of a party. So despite everyone’s sour mood, a few days later, I found myself being shaken awake at an ungodly hour of morning.

  “Kitty…what?”

  She held a finger to her lips, hair bedraggled and grin wide.

  “I’m not dressed! Where are we going?” I hissed when she motioned for me to follow her out of the bedroom.

  In answer, she tossed a coat at my head. “Trust me.”

  Then she was gone. I considered diving back under the covers, although by now I’d realized that there was no such thing as hiding from Kitty. Groaning, I pulled the coat over my nightclothes, yanked the curlers from my hair, and fumbled about for my thickest pair of socks before pattering onto the landing.

  “Outside?” I gasped when she opened the exterior kitchen door, letting the freezing night air come gushing in. “Are you mad?”

  “It’ll be fun.” Her grin widened.

  Fun. I stared into the night, doubtful that anything out there could be preferable to my bed. Still, a part of me was desperate for even an illusion of fun after recent events…something to jerk the bad thoughts out of mind so that I’d be able to think.

  I bit back a gasp at the biting wind outside, toes curling within my socks. Untainted by light, the sky above shone with an unreal amount of glittering stars, though even they were unable to break the swath of darkness that had swallowed the entire world. I could barely make out Kitty’s silhouette mere yards away from me.

  “Make sure you’re quiet,” she warned. “If you wake Aunt Jule, she’ll flay both of us. Then I’ll flay you again for ruinin’ the party.”

  “Party?”

  In answer, she reached out and grabbed my wrist, striding with such speed that I kept stumbling over every invisible pothole and pebble. At that moment, given one wish, it would’ve been a pair of shoes without question.

  Out of the oblivion, an outbuilding loomed up in front of us. I recognized its peculiar squat shape as one of the equipment sheds—really, a glorified spare cupboard, as it held nothing but broken mechanical parts and other items that belonged nowhere else. Inside was a dank, musty smell that set me coughing. Seconds later, I saw we weren’t alone.

  “Hello, Evelyn,” Andrew said tiredly, shadows under his eyes. “Kitty dragged you up too, eh?”

  “Kicking and screaming.” I yawned, almost too numb with cold and exhaustion to care about how dishevelled I was. At least the dark provided some cover.

  Harriet and Anna were squashed together at the other end of the shed, Harriet looking half-asleep and Anna looking as though she might just throttle someone. They too were wearing pyjamas, so I relaxed.

  “D’you think I should get James too?” Kitty asked. “Can’t keep ‘is mouth shut, but all the same…”

  “Spare him this pain,” Anna muttered.

  Kitty hesitated. “Be back in a mo.” Then she was gone again.

  I sat on an upturned pail, squinting through the dimness to try to get some sense of Kitty’s plan. She’d taken some of our homemade lamps—candle wax melted into saucers before being relit—and dotted them about on the dusty boxes. There were no windows in here, no cracks to leak light into the precious darkness outside, but as a result, the mustiness was almost suffocating.

  Kitty returned with James, who seemed far too awake for our lifeless crowd. Anna buried her face in her arms and shut her eyes.

  “Right.” Andrew scooted over to allow James to sit beside him. “Tell us, Kit—what have you cooked up?”

  “Well,” she began, “I thought, since everyone’s actin’ so flippin’ miserable lately, an’ Bonfire Night ended up bein’ nothin’ but a typical day, we could have…” she turned around and brought something into the centre of our circle, “…a midnight feast! Like when we were kids! See, I got leftover pie an’ biscuits an’ toast an’ I think some sausages that had somethin’ green on �
��em.” Kitty poked the questionable sausage and shrugged, grinning ear-to-ear. “Ta-da!”

  Silence.

  “Kitty!” Anna raised her head, her mouth a tight line. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “This is wonderful,” I interjected. Anna redirected her irritation at me. “I think it’s exactly what we need.”

  “I thought so!” She perked up. “Billy an’ me used to do this all the time. ’Cept we’d usually have chocolate and sweets, but y’know, this is the best I could do.”

  “Perfect,” I said, making a mental note to avoid the meat at all costs.

  “Mum will kill you if she finds out you’ve been stealing food.” Andrew reached for a biscuit and snapped it in half. It looked stale enough to break teeth. “And candles.”

  “Your gloomy faces would’ve killed me if I hadn’t.”

  Kitty twisted around and fiddled with an object hidden behind an old wheel, and after an ear-splitting whine, music began warbling through the shed. I recognized the woman’s low voice and quick beat of the song, surprising myself by deciding that I liked it—all the music we’d had in Boundary came from the piano. This was far more cheerful.

  “C’mon.” Kitty reached for James, who’d been poking the sausage dubiously. “Dance with me!”

  Even Anna cracked a smile at the whirling chaos of their dancing. We collectively cringed whenever a foot or arm came too close to a lantern or piece of equipment, but strangely enough, Kitty wasn’t as ungraceful a dancer as I might’ve expected. She followed no particular style, moving to the tune without a single care for what any of us thought. She looked…free.

  “Anyone else going join us?” she asked after a while, face glistening. “Or are you all sissies?”

  Nobody moved.

  Well, I thought, why not?

  “Harriet?” I extended a hand. “Partners in shame?”

  Harriet blinked. “I can’t dance.”

  “Neither can I. But I think Kitty’s right—we need some cheering up.”

  I didn’t have to elaborate. Harriet nodded, finally coming to life, going so far as to giggle at our ridiculous movements. Andrew clapped along to the beat, also laughing, and Kitty seized our hands so that we formed a single messy circle, spinning so quickly that the shed appeared to vanish around us. If only briefly, I found myself considering nothing but the moment.

  “Anna!” Kitty cried, dragging her cousin upwards by her nightgown collar. “You too!”

  “I don’t even like this song.” Anna tried tugging away in vain. “It’s childish.”

  “Billy’s twenty-one, an’ he never had a problem with this kind o’ stuff.”

  “Because he’s your brother.”

  But Anna could no more resist Kitty’s pull than the rest of us. The spinning grew faster and faster, much faster than the rhythm of the song, but we were all laughing too hard to hear the music anyway.

  Eventually, the dizziness became too much and we collapsed down again. The air in the shed felt doubly suffocating, so in mutual agreement, we blew out all the lanterns and let in the night air.

  “Weren’t that fun?” Kitty asked happily, draping her arms over mine and Harriet’s shoulders. “Weren’t it a great idea?”

  “Wasn’t,” corrected Anna.

  “Yes,” I spoke over her, quite honestly. “Yes, Kitty, it was.”

  In the end, none of us touched the food, so Kitty left to distribute it to the pigs before Julia noticed. The rest of us stumbled across the farmyard in silence, leaning in to each other for support against the uneven ground. A cloud had relinquished its hold on the moon, making it somewhat easier to see the house, but the short journey still seemed to take tenfold as long as it should have.

  Anna cursed as she skidded on a frozen puddle. “Great, now I’ve gone and rolled my ankle.”

  “You should’ve done that on the way over,” Andrew joked. “Spared yourself the dancing.”

  “Tell me about it. Times like this, I’m jealous of your leg, since you—” She caught herself and broke off. “Sorry, Andrew. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Andrew didn’t reply.

  “You’re so mean, Anna,” James supplied.

  “I said I was sorry!”

  “Yeah, but you still—”

  “Can I have a minute?” Andrew interrupted, stopping. “I need to talk to Evelyn. Without you lot.”

  I stopped too, surprised. Anna, Harriet, and James frowned at each other.

  “Please.”

  Anna raised a dark eyebrow before continuing towards the house. The others followed at her heel, and just like that, Andrew and I were alone in the darkness.

  “A car accident,” he said, tone flat. “That’s how I hurt my leg. I wasn’t supposed to be out that night, but me and my girlfriend, Beth… Anyway, it was too dark out, and a car didn’t see us, and we were both hit.”

  I digested this. “That’s terrible. But…why keep it a secret at all? It wasn’t your fault.”

  “No. It was my fault. I convinced her to break the rules. It’s dangerously dark in the lanes at night, and I didn’t care, and—” he exhaled sharply—“she died. And I didn’t tell you because even now, I hate myself for it, and I didn’t want you to hate me too.”

  “How could I hate you?” I managed to say. “If anyone was at fault, it was the driver.”

  He laughed. A different sort of laugh from the light-heartedness in the shed—this one contained no humour. “Maybe.”

  I searched for what to say, not succeeding. Words seemed awfully cheap in situations like these. So instead, I found his shoulder and laid a hand on it.

  “Sorry.” Andrew took a shaky breath. “I’ve ruined Kitty’s mood.”

  “Gosh, don’t you go apologizing.”

  “You’ve got no idea how much I have to apologize for.” He sighed. “Look, Evelyn, I told you this tonight because I…I’ve got some questions that need answering. And I’m hoping you’ll be willing to tell me your story in return for mine.”

  I hadn’t forgotten our promise, so I’d been half expecting his request. After spilling everything to Harriet, the idea of dredging up Boundary again was less scary, though by no means comfortable. The Others enabled Harriet to understand the impossible—Andrew wasn’t like that. Andrew, like the rest of his family, thought Harriet to be either mad or a liar, and I didn’t want him to think of me as either.

  But we’d made a deal.

  So thankful again for the cover of night, I closed my eyes and rattled off my entire story as though reciting a rehearsed speech. Everything I’d told Harriet, from Madon to Fred, Ripping to D. When I finished, I steeled myself for his reaction.

  “That’s why Deio Farthing came to the farm,” Andrew hissed.

  “Yes,” I said, taken-aback by his choice of question. “And Madon, too.”

  Andrew jerked his head. “So Harriet…her monsters are real?”

  “It’s all real. The magic and the monsters.” When he didn’t speak again, I added, “Harriet mentioned she thought you believed her.”

  I felt him stiffen, clearly surprised by this. “I guess there was always a part of me that wondered. It’s not like believing in fairy tales and nightmares is encouraged at our age, but Harriet…she’s so bloody convincing when she does her ghost act, I thought there must be some truth in it.” He sighed, then forced a smile. “I owe her an apology, it seems.”

  He believes me too. I could have cried with relief.

  “But then, why didn’t you go with Deio? What are you going to do about your friends?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You threw out his contact details, remember?”

  Andrew muttered something, too low for me to catch it. Then he began walking away from me towards the house, the irregular beat of his footsteps chewing up the night calm.

  “Andrew?”

  “We’re going to find those Farthings,” he said with an odd fierceness. “I’m not going to be the reason—I’ve made too many mistakes I can’t fix to abandon
the ones I can.”

  “Leave the farm?” I gasped. “But what about Julia? We can’t!”

  “We can. I’m a useless labourer anyway, and you…” He broke off, but I knew what he meant to say; I wasn’t exactly their most valuable worker either.

  The speed of his decision shocked me. The absurdness of my story, surely, should have taken longer than a heartbeat to sink in. I’d said how dangerous Demitra and Deio were, yet he was convincing me to chase after them? And leaving now, just when I was beginning to form a proper connection with Kitty and Harriet and the others—just when I was on the verge of belonging somewhere again—felt wrong.

  But I knew I couldn’t afford to think like that. The Pearsons would survive without me, and there was every chance my friends within Boundary wouldn’t if I didn’t intervene. I needed an ally like Andrew, someone firmly on my side and well versed in the oddities of reality.

  Even if I did feel like I was sticking a knife in Julia’s back by doing so. By stealing him.

  “Okay,” I said, once I’d jogged to catch up with him. “Let’s do this.”

  Chapter Ten

  We left the next morning without telling anyone. It was all very sudden. Just leaving like this felt terribly rude, considering how patient and accommodating the family had been, but Andrew had assured me there was no other way.

  And so, without further ado, we left the Pearson household behind us, walking uncertainly forward into the pale morning light. For what seemed like forever, we walked in silence, the soft gravel crunching underfoot and crisp air flushing our faces a rosy pink. The crows, perching precariously on unstable fences, cawed at us as if taunting our guilt back into the open, until the bright sunlight forced them to fly back into the less offensive darkness of the tree line. The track snaked its way through about half a mile of farmland before finally joining the hedged main road, giving us plenty of time to contemplate the implications of our hurried choice.

  “They’ll hate me,” I said, after ten minutes or so. “They’ll think I made you run away with me. Maybe you should go back.”